I recently had a video Skype session using Ubuntu, with another party using
Windows in Vietnam, without any trouble. I'm using 10.04 amd64.

The problem comes when you are using Skype and then something else uses the
sound card at the same time. I am not a Skype user, but I get around quite a
bit and see frequent complaints. Even power users have problems with it.
Many blame Skype and many blame PulseAudio (just because they like to).
Whatever the problem, it has been around for some time. Lucid is the first
version of Ubuntu with PA that I have heard little in the way of problems in
that respect.

With Windows, having different drivers and codecs is not a problem because
it has a registry and you can have multiple instances of dependencies. Linux
presents problems because it does not work this way. VLC has its own codecs,
but it has no problem. But then, it is open source. Developers can look at
the code and make it work on their platform. Skype is closed, so users
should not blame Linux distributions when it does not work.

You never heard of dll hell? Isn't that a windows term? At any rate, the
registry isn't some advantage of windows, but a clunky mess. Linux
distros have always had shared libraries, and multiple coexisting
versioned libraries. There is no problem running multiple versions of
programs on linux, each with its own library dependencies, since in
linux, every single process has it's own dedicated environment, which is
isolated from the environments of all other processes.

Whatever the problem with skype, it's not any inability of linux to
handle different dependencies for different binaries. Either the coders
are not knowledgeable enough of linux to write good apps, or the
management doesn't want to spend any resources on a linux port, or both,
but the end result is that we get a half baked, half-hearted version of
skype on linux.

Agreed. I am not advocating a registry. Just saying that the systems are
very different. I am finished with cleaning registries, dealing with corrupt
registry or defragmenting it. Thanks but I take a pass. :)

The thing that Skype does is that it does not use Linux's sound system and
it leads t problems. I think that the same can be said for video. I am not a
Skype user, but I hear complaints all of the time on no matter what distro
that I am on. I think these problems could be sorted out with some
cooperation. Developers have offered to help, but so far they are having
none of it.

You make some good points about the registry and the way Linux is different.
As for running multiple instances, I do it all of the time, but it isn't
without problems.

Skype is proprietary. Windows is proprietary. Linux is open source.

The problem with Skype in Linux is nothing new and has nothing to do with
Linux or Windows, but with the fact that it is proprietary and Linux
developers can do nothing to improve Skype's Linux version. Any blame has to
do with the fact that Skype does not use Linux's built in drivers, but uses
its own.